Editors’ letter
Dear readers,
The analysis and description of oral and written textual genres / discourse genres as they circulate in different social situations, as well as their role in the teaching and learning of languages, has attracted the interest of many researchers in Brazil and abroad. Every new meeting of the biennial International Symposium on Textual Genres – SIGET, (a research group within ANPOLL,Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Letras e Linguística), brings hundreds of new studies from a variety of theoretical and methodological frameworks. In light of the relevance of these studies to broader discussions fielding applied linguistics, the current issue of RBLA brings selected papers from the last meeting of genre researchers – SIGET V, held at the University of Caxias do Sul, Brazil, from August 11-14, 2009. The papers presented here deal specifically with genre teaching of the mother tongue.
Furlanetto’s essay – From monological discourse of consciousness to
discourse genres – i examines the epistemological importance of Bakhtin’s dialogical approach to discourse genres which function as units of knowledge within social practice. Oliveira discusses in Genre and literacy the relationship between these two fields of study, taking into account the complexity in both theory and pedagogical implementation; she proposes “literacy projects” as a
means to develop a contextualized work with genres. Street’s ‘Academic
Literacies Approaches to Genre?’ discusses, in the light of New Literacy Studies, how teachers provide support to their students to write required genres in the academy. Marinho’s article “Writing in Academic Literacy Practices” presents the results of research on preservice training courses for teachers. The author, following Bakhtinian theories, suggests that work with academic texts must be based on the practice of producing academic discourse. Baltar and
Costa, in Oral Exposition Textual Genres in Adult Education, present the
results of action research developed in youth and adult education at high school level (EJA), using oral presentations in a didactice sequence to help students to expand their repertoire of oral genres. Belmiro, in Multimodality in Infant Literature Books and the Education of Reader Teachers, presents part of the results of a doctorate research on the relations between images and verbal texts in infant literature books from the point of view of Bakhtin’s concept
of style. Guimarães, in Textual Genre and First Language Teaching: between the path and the stone, discusses the importance of the concept of genre in the classroom to transform the reality of teaching written text production and presents empirical data on the way genre work advances language practices. Dell’Isola, in Exams of Portuguese Language and Writing in entrance examinations: what do they prove?, analyzes Portuguese university entrance tests in the last ten years at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, concluding that the tests fulfill their intended goal.
This issue closes with a posthumous interview with José Luiz Meurer preceded by a provocative discussion on the circulation of texts in the academy proposed by Bazerman, having Rajagopalan as an interlocutor. On the one
hand, Bazerman argues in Paying the Rent: languaging particularity and
novelty that once the teachers realize that the process of writing depends on all written material previously produced, they replace their anxiety about students’ plagiarism with a concern about what is original or additional work expected from them based on previous texts. This can lead to a positive pedagogy that supports student’s learning from previous texts, enabling them to develop their own ideas. On the other hand, Rajagopolan replies, in The Tenant’s lot: on paying the rent or facing the prospect of eviction –a response to Bazerman, by questioning more deeply the fine line between engagement with what had been previously produced and originality. He considers that the paradox of originality permeates all academic work.
Enjoy your reading!
Charles Bazerman and Marcos Baltar
